Revolution song

Chuden Kabimo is in Kathmandu to receive this year’s Madan Puraskar prize for his novel, उरमाल that is set among the tea plantations and their workers in northeast India’s Dooar plains. 

The award ceremony was postponed due to Nepal's violent GenZ protests, and his trip had to overcome highways and bridges destroyed by this week’s heavy rains in the Darjeeling hills and across the border in Nepal. 

Kabimo’s previous work, फातसुङ was the story of the Gorkhaland Movement in Darjeeling 30 years ago told through fictionlised characters and their friendships, their love for the land, and revolution. Song of the Soil is its English translation by Ajit Baral published in 2021, and there are also Hindi and Bengali translations. 

The Gorkhaland Movement sought to create a separate state for Nepali-speaking Indians of West Bengal. There is plenty of violence, arson, and young death in the book, and a poignant contemplation on the 8-9 September Gen Z protests in Nepal. 

The plot is structured as a story, inside of a story, inside of a story, and starts off as the narrator gets the bad news that his childhood friend Ripden was killed in a landslide. He heads back to the site, Malbung, where he was born. 

He reminisces about his days in school with the rebellious Ripden, who encouraged the narrator to skip school and led him on adventures instead. He remembers villagers who sold their farms for alcohol, and dedicated teachers who helped them dream of better lives. 

Ripden lives with his uncle. His mother died when he was four, and his father disappeared in the Movement. One day he hears that his father is in fact dead as well, and decides to run away to a village called Lolay. There the pair meet Nasim, who is involved in the Gorkhaland Movement as a child soldier. 

Chuden Kabimo is of the Lepcha community, a people fiercely proud of their identity, homeland, history, and myths. He weaves together the stories of the characters, detailing their motivation to rebel. ‘I may give up my life, I may give up my soul. But Gorkhaland, I will have anyhow,’ says one leader of the Movement. 

It is the story of all revolutions where young idealistic people join with the best of intentions, but things betray their initial hopes. The spirit of the revolution can get everyone to protest, even those who do not want to be so involved, but they get killed anyway. Much like what happened outside Parliament last month in Kathmandu. 

Others think of personal success through the movement, and dream of a day where even the pigs can eat rice and every house has a swimming pool. Others keep themselves going through with alcohol and remembering past, present, or potential lovers. 

Ajit Baral’s translation has short, crisp sentences that make the 200 pages move along at a fast clip. The sparse language allows the writer to recede to the background as the story unfolds by itself.  

Kabimo condenses love stories into a chapter or sometimes just a few paragraphs. This works because the story of the revolution must be at the centre, and all else is tangential. Characters are sometimes introduced only to be killed off quickly. 

Like in all revolutions, there are factions and they are fighting among themselves, against Communists, or against the police. Readers not familiar with Gorkhaland may find it difficult to keep track, but this also parallels the real confusion of a society in turmoil. 

Kabimo also tends to start his chapters with statements like ‘history is written by those who stumble in life’ which sounds better in Nepali, and something is lost in translation.  

Read with the recent Nepal protests in mind, there is almost a sense of relief that the fires that spread here burnt themselves out so quickly. But in Song of the Soil, the revolution is never-ending with villages and families living in terror and deprivation. 

It seems that the longer insurrections last, the more people die, and groups become divided making it easier to subvert the original goal of a revolution.

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"I make sure I am always connected to the story"

- Chuden Kabimo, the winner of this year's Madan Puraskar literary prize for the book Urmaal

Nepali Times: Your journalism about the Gorkhaland Movement inspired your earlier novel, Faatsung. What was your process in learning about tea plantation workers for Urmaal?

Chuden Kabimo: I had been reporting on the second Gorkhaland movement, so it was easy for me to write Faatsung. For Urmaal, I lived with the tea plantation community. I started work six months after Faatsung was published, heading to the Dooars and exploring it. I had gone with the intention of writing a story about child marriage in a community there. 

I talked to the locals and the workers, and the need to write Urmaal started pulling me. I would often think that I had enough material for my story, but then I would want to add certain elements, which kept me going back over the five years it took to write the book. 

How does all that information you gather develop into a storyline and characters? 

When I start the book I don’t know how the plot will start and end. I talk to many people from different backgrounds. Each person tends to introduce me to other people that I should speak to. 

I listen to their stories. As the stories start to fit together, I get a sense of the plot and that is where my characters come from. For a single character I need to bring together the stories of many people, maybe ten or twelve. It is not possible to base a character on a single individual all the time.

I start where I want to, and as I keep writing the story slowly takes shape. I wrote what ended up becoming the last chapter for Urmaal, first. 

What about your actual writing process?

I wake up early in the morning, then I either go cycling or play football. Then I get back and  sit at my computer for sometimes two hours. I sometimes write only two lines in the two hours, sometimes I can write five hundred words. I don’t set a word count for myself. I cannot write a lot at once, I am a slow writer, but I strongly believe that you have to write daily. 

When you do not write daily, especially for a novel, you tend to lose the connection to the story. I just make sure that I am always connected to the story, which helps me always think about it even when I am on the bus or something. 

What does winning the Madan Puraskar mean to you? 

I feel that the Madan Puraskar is the biggest prize in Nepali literature, so it is a source of great pride for me. 

When I wrote my first book, I hadn’t thought of winning any prizes. When I wrote Faatsung I was thinking much more of Kalimpong and Darjeeling. What Faatsung did for me was make me recognised. A lot of people in Nepal liked it too. How to outdo Faatsung was a challenge for me when I wrote Urmaal.

After the book was published, it was getting some good reviews but I didn’t expect it to win the Madan Puraskar. I was at home reading in Siliguri when I got the news. 

For other awards, like the JCB, they had contacted me to tell me that I had been shortlisted or that I won, but to not reveal it to anyone. It was the opposite with the Madan Puraskar. I was notified via Facebook! 

It was a unique type of happiness. It is also great motivation for me to work on my third novel. Perhaps I will do something about Sikkim, moving away from Gorkhaland. 

How does it feel being recognised in Nepal?

Six years ago, readers in Nepal did not know who I was. I was new to Nepal and Nepal was new to me. I grew up in rural Kalimpong, and we only had a radio for entertainment. On the radio, we used to listen to Nepali programs, which developed an emotional attachment to the country. 

I came to Kathmandu for the first time for Faatsung, and it was a lot of fun seeing the places that I had heard about on the radio. The journey after that, of the love the readers have shown for the book and now the prize, has been very meaningful.